High profile leaders and government buildings all around the world can
be targets of terrorist attacks at any given moment. Many of these officials
and buildings are protected with defenses that are designed to protect the
people inside buildings and vehicles. One of the more common types of
protection is glass that is both bullet and bomb resistant.

According to the Pentagon, glass shards are one of the leading causes
of death in many bombing attacks. The problem with the blast-resistant glass on
the market today is that the material is very thick and can’t fit into the
windowpanes in existing buildings. The glass is said to be about as thick as a
300-page novel.

A team of engineers from the University of Missouri and the University
of Sydney in Australia has developed a new type of blast-resistant glass that is much
thinner than the current glass, but has the same blast-resistant properties as
the thick stuff. The new glass is about a quarter-inch thick and is made from a
plastic composite with an inert layer of polymer reinforced with glass fibers.
The team testing the glass has already exposed a small test panel to an
explosion.

Sanjeev Khanna, the project's principal investigator and an associate
professor of mechanical engineering at Missouri said, "The results were
fantastic. While the discharge left the pane cracked, the front surface
remained completely intact."

The new glass gets its strength from the use of long glass fibers in a
woven cloth that is soaked in liquid plastic and then bonded with adhesive. The
resulting glass is very strong, thin, and clear. The current thick
blast-resistant glass has a green tinge.

The new glass would also fit existing windowpanes.

"Designing
an affordable, easy-to-install blast-resistant window could encourage
widespread use in civilian structures, thereby protecting the lives of
occupants against multiple threats and hazards," notes John Fortune,
manager of the project for the Infrastructure and Geophysical Division at
S&T.

Tests with larger explosions and larger glass sheets are planned.

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Actually I'm pretty sure it WAS designed to withstand a plane hit. But they were thinking at the very largest a 737. The tower actually did hold until the jet fuel melted the fireproofing off the internal structure. Not everything can be designed like a nuclear power plant. I know, not your point, but as an engineer, yeah we'd love to build things to withstand atomic bombs and a hundred years of the environment but truth is its both ugly and expensive.

As for thinner ballistic glass, using it requires a lot of thought. Fire departments don't like it but security firms do. The armed forces are really going to love this but I'm sure the best use would be transporting whales in a Klingon Bird-of-Prey.

According to the architect, they were designed to withstand the impact of a 707, the largest plane in service at the time the WTC was designed. Overdesign meant they were able to survive the impact of a considerably larger 767 at a much higher velocity than is typical at those altitudes.

That they collapsed due to the fire is completely independent of their impact resistance. Frankly, I was amazed that the second tower managed to stay standing as long as it did. After the second plane hit, you could clearly see half of the structural support members on one face were completely severed. But the thing kept standing.